I have had the great honour of photographing the Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire’s flagship exhibition, “INSIGHT 2015” for their publicity.
It is an exciting and vibrant exhibition showcasing the work of over 100 artists taking part located at the gallery, New Greenham Arts Centre, Newbury. The exhibition runs from 2nd – 25th May, on view are a wide range of art works.

Anna Nagel has asked me to create images for her book called Fair Game. In this second part I am going to show the initial images that I edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. In part three I will finish by showing the text overlaid onto them.

My start point is to process the .NEF files generated by my Nikon D7000 in Adobe Lightroom. The image was shot in natural daylight (10 secs @f22 ISO100 50mm). I firstly correct any chromatic lens aberration and upright the perspective. Then I lightly sharpen, white balance to Daylight, check white clipping (this is shown on the ‘before’ picture as red), remove any dust or spots. Finally I reduced the saturation, so the orange fabric wasn’t too harsh and dodged a little light back into the tarot cards.

Screen shot of book cover 1 in Adobe Lightroom

The second image was also shot in natural daylight (10 secs @f29 ISO100 56mm). I repeated the steps that I completed for the first image. I finished by burning the highlight on the wood to the left of the image, so the wood was more evenly balanced all over and increased the shadow alongside the right of the lavender.

I am really excited about my latest photographic project, a book cover! A good friend of mine who goes under the nom de plume of Anna Nagel has asked me to create images for her book covers. The first one we are creating an image for is called Fair Game. Set in seventeenth century England against a backdrop of civil war, witch hunts and religious upheaval, this historical romance tells the story of Anne Somerton, a respected noblewoman with a passion she dare not admit and a secret she must never confess.

I started with a few ideas in my head of how to set up the shoot for the Fair Game book cover. Inspiration was taken from re-reading the novel and looking at other book covers that both I and Anna liked.

The first set up I tried was using my fireplace so I could get a definite line that the key items from the book could stand on. I like using natural light when I can, so using a tripod became essential. Long exposure times and filling in shadow areas with card and a mirror gave me the look that I was after. I shot multiple versions with and without fill-in to give me plenty of choice when editing the images in the computer later.

Me shooting the first set for the Fair Game book cover

The second set up was to be a table-top style image with plenty of space in the foreground for the text element of the book cover to be accommodated. These elements were a strong compositional element to this shoot and a different way of thinking for me. If we filled the image with ’stuff’ how clear would the author’s name and the title of the book be? More recent ways for authors to self publish mean as a photographer and designer I have to think how this image will look/ reproduce as a tiny thumbnail on sites such as Amazon.

Second set for Fair Game cover, using white card to fill-in shadow areas

Fair Game is available through Amazon, follow this link or on Goodreads, follow this link. Next time I will show you how I edit the images in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop ready for the text elements to be added.

This month sees an article written for my local community booklet, ‘Thatcham Connections’, giving the main reasons why I think it is important for businesses to have a website. Here are some of the highlights of the piece:

Visibility: Websites make your business available 24 hours and day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

Reputation: A professional web presence can build credibility beyond the size and experience of your company.

Advertising: It provides low-cost advertising with lasting value, generating more opportunities for new business.

Sales: It is easy for customers to find out more about the products or services that you offer.

I was inspired the other day by this shed door, the textures of the old peeling paint alongside the pebble dash wall. Layered on top of this is the delicate structure of the seed heads. Couldn’t resist! I have a think about old doors…

This saturday, 11am – 3pm, I will be at City Arts in central Newbury RG14 6DB, selling my greetings cards, framed and mounted artwork, along with my NEW 2105 Calendar. If you can’t make it along but still fancy buying one, a great Christmas present, then go to Lulu.com and before 25th Dec you can get 25% off using code KTP4